This is a blog for early childhood teachers looking for ways to expand and enrich play and learning in and around their sand and water tables with easy-to-make, low-cost apparatus. It may also be of interest for anyone who appreciates children's messy play.

About Me

Early childhood education has been my life for over 30 years. I have taught all age groups from infants to 5-year-olds. I was a director for five years in the 1980s, but I returned to the classroom 22 years ago. My passion is watching the ways children explore and discover their world. In the classroom, everything starts with the reciprocal relationships between adults and children and between the children themselves. With that in mind, I plan and set up activities. But that is just the beginning. What actually happens is a flow that includes my efforts to invite, respond and support children's interface with those activities and with others in the room. Oh yeh, and along the way, the children change the activities to suit their own inventiveness and creativity. Now the processes become reciprocal with the children doing the inviting, responding and supporting. Young children are the best learners and teachers. I am truly fortunate to be a part of their journey.

Saturday, April 30, 2016

For the past month I have been writing about big wardrobe boxes that were first set up as a fort in the large muscle area of the classroom.

Four big wardrobe boxes were taped together with passage ways between the boxes on the inside and openings all around and on top for the children to peek out of and into.

I moved the boxes from the large muscle area to the sensory table. I disconnected all the boxes and set one on each side of the table.

In this configuration, the space over the table is open and can be accessed by the children either through the spaces in-between the boxes or from inside the boxes themselves.

To this setup, I added two new boxes. One of the boxes was an iMac box. This box was embedded on one end into one of the wardrobe boxes and embedded on the other end into the second new box, a large wreath box.

Here is the view of the iMac box from inside the wardrobe box looking toward the wreath box. The iMac box has such an interesting shape being wider at the bottom than at the top. It defines a space not usually experienced by children. The iMac box also changes the shape of the wardrobe box window into the sensory table. Children inside the wardrobe box can gather or transport pellets from the table or the iMac box.

It looks like the iMac box is suspended in midair, but it is embedded in the wreath box and then taped to the wardrobe box in such a way that it is quite stable. Pieces of duct tape run from the bottom of the iMac box to the top of the wardrobe box.

The wreath box spans the width of the table and is embedded into the two wardrobe boxes on either side. The box rests on the lip of the table on either side to add strength to the structure.

Children access the wreath box through the hole cut in the side seen in the picture above and through holes cut in the ends of the wreath box where they are embedded in the wardrobe boxes. One of the direct entry points is through the wardrobe box that is not connected to the other boxes and directly faces the wreath box.

With these additions the space changed significantly. Children could no longer just scoop pellets from the space over the table unimpeded. The area above the table was now partially closed creating restrictions to their operations. The video below illustrates two of those restrictions: 1) having to reach around and under the apparatus for pellets and 2) having to reach into the narrower iMac box for pellets.

For the girl to reach under the apparatus to gather the pellets, she has to reach down and around the apparatus. That is a physical and balancing challenge as it is, but to complete the transfer of pellets into her bucket, she has to reverse the whole operation. For the boy to gather his pellets, he has to almost crawl into the iMac box.

In both of these instances, the children can see the pellets they are gathering. One child found a way to scoop pellets even though she could not see them. She is in a wardrobe box and wants to get pellets from the bottom of the sensory table. She figures out she could reach through a small opening created by the wreath box bisecting the original window in the wardrobe box. Only her arm fits through the opening and she has to wedge he head between the wreath box and the wardrobe box to reach the pellets. As a consequence, she cannot see what she is doing. Watch.

If you give a child a long hallway or an open field, the child will run. The spaces tell her to run. In this new configuration of a big box apparatus around the sensory table, there are a lot of tight spaces that restrict and shape how children move and operate in the spaces. Just this morning I was just watching my 10-month-old granddaughter crawl under the table and the rocking chair. What is it about tight spaces that calls the children to action?

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Last week I wrote about the physical challenges children create for themselves. They do it all the time. This particular post was in the context of four large boxes installed on four sides of the sensory table.

Another feat the children undertake all the time is to re-purpose materials to suite their own mission at any given time. The examples again come from the same installation of big boxes around the table.

One example of re-purposing something is the child who decides to use a dustpan as a scoop. The dustpans and brooms are always next to the table for sweeping up messes. This child wants a bigger scoop for his operations, so he appropriates a dustpan.

Another adult around the table actually comments on what a big scoop the child has and compares it to a bulldozer.

Another child takes a short, clear plastic tube to make a scoop. That is a bit tricky because the tube is open on both ends. Watch how carefully he proceeds so he does not loose any pellets out of the other end of the tube.

He is careful, that is, while scooping and lifting the pellets out of the table. However, when he is ready to pour, he quickly launches the pellets into the bucket. Most of the pellets end up in the bucket, but some fly out the other end.

Another child takes a long, clear plastic tube for a lever on a fulcrum to transport the pellets from inside the table into a bucket next to the table. Because the high end of the tube reaches beyond the table, he spills a fair amount of pellets on the floor.

He could have just lifted the tube to pour the pellets in the bucket, but instead, he uses the lip of the table as a fulcrum to both support the weight of the tube and establish a point on which to rotate the tube to empty it into the bucket. It looks like real-world physics to me.

One child went so far as to bring scissors from the writing area on the other side of the room. I often have children bring things from other areas, but this is the first time someone has brought something from the writing area to use at the sensory table. Watch as she uses the scissors to pick up one pellet at a time from the table and then drop it into a window in the box.

She is very meticulous about making sure she gets only one pellet at a time. In fact, the second time she goes for a pellet, she gets two and drops one before putting the other one in the window.

I could have done the teacher thing and stopped her by saying the scissors stay at the writing table. Instead, I did a different teacher thing: I observed and recorded what I saw. I could not help but think how ingenious this child was to take a writing table utensil and re-purpose it as pincer in the sensory table.

In fact in every instance I referenced, I could have found a reason to stop the actions of the child. For instance I could have said for the first one: "Dustpans are for sweeping." For the second one: "You will loose the pellets out the other end." For the third one: "You are spilling way too much when you fill your tube." If I had done that, though, I would have missed the resourcefulness and the inventiveness of the children as the re-purpose the materials at hand. That idea is transformative because it applies to all other constructions and all other areas of the room and all the materials in the room.

The question is: Does anything go or are there limits to what is allowed?

Saturday, April 16, 2016

The big box fort that was set up in the large muscle area of my room is now history.

The fort is gone, but the boxes have been re-purposed to create an new apparatus at the sensory table. I separated the four boxes and positioned them around the four sides of the sensory table.

Unlike the fort, the boxes are now their own separate cubbies. For the most part, the openings remained the same except for the ones facing the table. I had to expand those holes otherwise the children would not be able to reach into the table from the boxes. Even though I made those holes bigger, there was an inherent physical challenge for the children to work from inside the box.

You can see in the picture above that a child inside the box had to bend his back to stand up to work in the table. Of course, an easy solution to the problem was to work from your knees like the two girls below kneeling in the boxes while scooping pellets. Was that comfortable? Imagine the new perspective the children experienced with their chin on the lip of the table while scooping pellets.

One of the features of this setup is that it created spaces in-between the boxes for the children to work in. In the picture above, the boy in the red was working in such a space. The boxes constituted physical barriers to his operations. Since he could not go side-to-side, perhaps he had to lean in further for his enterprise. In the picture below, you can see four children working from inside each of the four boxes, but two children are working in those in-between spaces.

Here it is easier to see that the boxes made it imperative to lean into the space over the table to coordinate their scooping and pouring.

Only two of the boxes had holes in the top. And the children found both of them and used them for their operations. The endeavor through one of the holes would have made a contortionist envious. Watch how the child in the video below retrieved a pan from the top of the box through a hole that accommodated just his head and his hands.

Just by itself, it was a physical challenge to drop the pellets from a height into the bucket, but these two did it while climbing up and balancing on the lip of the table.

These are
good examples of a physical challenges the children create for themselves.
Over the past couple of years, I have come to appreciate those
physical challenges and how the children actualize them. In fact, it is the 9th axiom in the right hand column of this blog. Given the time, the space, the resources and the freedom to explore, the children invariably search out their own unique physical challenges to create moments of agency and mastery in their world/s.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Before I return to the sensory table, I would like to take a second look at this year's big box fort with a little different lens. Last week I wrote about literacy in connection with the fort. This week, I would like to examine how the children explore spaces in and around the big box fort. I connected four big wardrobe boxes so children could crawl in, out, and through boxes.

There are no doors on the side facing the room. In fact, there is only one window in box #3 that faces the rest of the room. Box #2 has no doors, only windows. Box #2 is connected with the other three boxes with inside portals.

Box #1, #3 and #4 each has an outside doors. The doors on boxes # 3 and #4 open on one end of the fort.

The door for box #1 opens out the back of the fort.

The highlighted square shows one corner of an inside passage with the dotted line representing the part of the inside door that is not visible. Children crawl through that passage to move through the fort.

When children explore these spaces, they do more than just crawl from one box to the other. They do that, but they also inhabit those spaces in different ways. One way is to do it with others.

That gets provocative when a couple of children settle into a space and a third child either wants to join them or pass through. How do we fit in this space and how can we accommodate more?

Another way to explore the spaces is to see what happens when we stand up. In the taller box, we have a small window to the world. Our bodies our inside,but our mind is looking out.

The shorter boxes offer the children the chance to be both in and out of box. How much of me can be out and how much of me can be out?

Can two of us be both out and in?

Another way to explore the spaces is by filling them with something. One group this year filled one of the end boxes with blocks and anything else they could find to put down the hole in the top of the box.

Of course, not everything they found fit in the top.

Filling up the box gave the children another way to explore spaces. How do we empty the spaces we filled?

The question is not only how do we empty the box, but what space do we use for the stuff as an interim to putting it all away?

Children like to explore the in-between spaces, too. One of those in-between spaces is wall with the cardboard window. You can see from the video below that it fosters a gleeful game of peek-a-boo.

The boy on the outside runs around the whole fort looking in windows and doors to see the child inside the structure. The boy inside the structure crawls from one end of the fort to the other. In the end, the boy on the outside peers in the window and can see the other child exiting the fort on the other side. The boy on the inside was inhabiting the inside spaces while the boy on the outside was inhabiting the spaces created by the structure on the outside. They were doing it together each in their own spaces.

How do children explore spaces? First, they find all the spaces. That includes all the spaces in, around and in-between Then the children act upon those spaces; they breathe life into those spaces. Children give those spaces meaning literally and figuratively by filling them with their play.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

This week I am not writing about an apparatus at the sensory table. Rather, I write about a structure I built in the large muscle area of my classroom. ( I always have large muscle play in my classroom as an option for the children who need to move when they need to move. That is pretty much all children.) Rest assured that it portends things to come in the sensory table.

Let's face it, I like cardboard boxes. I especially like big boxes because big boxes allow for the creation of appealing spaces that the children can explore inside and out with their whole bodies. One of the things I like to do with big boxes is to connect them to form a fort with interconnecting rooms with multiple ways in and out and multiple windows to peek in and out of. Two years ago, I wrote about a box fort I set up the large muscle area of my classroom.

The fort consisted of five boxes of different sizes interconnect with passage ways on the inside and windows and doors all around.

The play was so good and so rich, that I wanted to do it again when the opportunity presented itself in the form of multiple big boxes. It just so happened that last November my daughter and son-in-law moved back to town with a moving company. Moving companies use wardrobe boxes for packing up clothes. I asked for the boxes and saved four for a new box fort for the large muscle area. Large boxes are easily transported if they are broken down so they are flat. They can easily be taped back together to make the big box again.

I have a small SUV so I was able to transport them to school and reconstruct them with duct tape. Below you can see this year's box fort. All four boxes are taped together on the outside and on the inside for greater stability. Boxes 1, 3 and 4 have doors into the fort.

Box 2 is the connecting box that the children pass through as they navigate the inside of the structure. Below is look inside box 2. The doorways to each of the other boxes are denoted (1, 3, and 4).

It looks like there is a traffic jam in the connecting box. No problem, though, because children's sense of space is so much different than that of adults.

Besides the doors, there are six windows. Windows 1, 2, 3, and 4 are on the sides of boxes. Windows 3 and 4 are small narrow windows on two sides of the middle box Windows 5 and 6 are cut in the top of two of the boxes.

Windows 1, 2 and 5 have flaps to open and close. Windows 3, 4, and 6 are open cuts.

The windows offer unique frames through which the children can view each other---both from the inside and from the outside.

There is one particular type of play in and around the fort that caught my eye this year. That particular type of play can be considered literacy play. Let's start on the inside. The fort became a perfect spot for a child to retreat to do her writing.

On the outside, one child decided to tag one of the boxes with her name. Can you say graffiti?

I pride myself in knowing everything that goes on in my classroom, but I did not see the child do this. The writing table is right next to the large muscle area so I am surprised more children did not get the idea.

The last bit of play around literacy is based on a short video I took of three children playing a made-up game of rollicking balls. One child is outside the structure trying to throw or stuff balls into one of the boxes. Another child is in the box deflecting or throwing out those same balls. The third child in the taller adjacent box keeps reaching through the hole to throw or deflect the balls, also.

The following week, I showed the video to the child in the taller box. After showing him the video, I asked him if he could draw himself throwing the ball. Since this child had not draw much at the writing table, I was surprised that he accepted the challenge. I set up the IPad with the picture of him reaching through the hole throwing the ball and he started to draw.

Did I plan this literacy play? No I did not. I thought I had built a large muscle apparatus that the children could use to explore spaces with their whole body. They did that for sure, but the children created so much more through their play by combining their ideas with the resources, materials and open-ended invitations.

P.S. On my Facebook page at the end of February, I shared a post (https://blog.kinstantly.com/kids-forts/ ) about the need for children to build forts. The post mostly talks about older children building forts outside, but I think there is a place for forts inside a preschool room, too.

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DIMENSIONS AND ELEMENTS FOR BUILDING IN AND AROUND THE SENSORY TABLE

When building apparatus for the sensory table, think in terms of the dimensions and elements listed below. Using the different dimensions and elements exponentially expands what can be built in and around the table.

1) ORIENTATION

a) Vertical

b) Horizontal

c) Incline

The incline can vary in degrees from slight to great.

2) LEVELS

Levels are important for children to experience space.

3) OPEN/CLOSED

4) SPACES

This follows from #2 and #3. Create spaces over, under, around and through the table. The spaces can be of various sizes to encourage exploration.

5) HOLES

Children need to put things in holes. Make holes of various sizes and shapes and on various levels.

AXIOMS OF SENSORIMOTOR PLAY

1) Children need to transport whatever is in the table out of the table.*Corollary to axiom 1

During the transporting, children will spill.

2) Children will explore all spaces in any given apparatus no matter how big or small.

*Corollary to axiom 2

More spaces equals more exploration.

3) Children will find all the different levels of play for any given apparatus.

*Corollary to axiom 3

Children will use all levels of play including the highest and the lowest---which includes the floor.

4) Children are naturally drawn to pouring, rolling, or sliding materials and objects down ramps, chutes, and tubes.

5) Children are compelled by nature to put things in holes.*Corollary 1 to axiom 5

Children will find every hole in and around an apparatus no matter how big or small.

*Corollary 2 to axiom 5

Children, whenever possible, will modify the holes of any given apparatus.

6) Children will try to stop or redirect the flow of any medium in the table for any given apparatus.

*Corollary to axiom 6

Children, whenever possible, will try to completely block the flow of any medium.

7) Children will always devise new and novel activities and explorations with the materials presented that are tangential to the apparatus itself.

8) Children will fill any and all containers with the medium or materials provided.

*Corollary to axiom 8

Children need to empty any and all filled containers.

9) Children will pursue their own unique physical challenges when working on, at or next to an apparatus.